


You and Undyne visit Seaworld

by morefishplease



Series: Comfy Fish Stories [68]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Freedom, Rays, SeaWorld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 20:36:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13419159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morefishplease/pseuds/morefishplease
Summary: What it says in the title. Due to having originally been written and posted for a different site most of my stories' titles are just descriptions of the story, and I'm too lazy to make up meaningful titles for everything.





	You and Undyne visit Seaworld

Undyne spreads her finned hand beneath the surface and you reach over, lay yours on top, feel the heat radiating off of her. She nudges you with her shoulder. “I’m trying to touch a ray,” she  tells you, eyes tracking the circling pudgy bodies of the rays in the touch tank.

“You still can,” you say, curling your fingers into hers, pressing her webs down lightly, and she rolls her eyes at you, smiles in spite of herself.

“Budge, sprat,” she tells you, pushing you harder this time, and you mock-grumble, pull your hand away, pretend to pout. She leans over, kisses you lightly, eyes one of the rays as it sweeps along the side of the tank. The way it keeps nudging its stubby head against the glass walls makes you think it’s trying to get out, to press through the glass and flop to the floor. It skirts under Undyne’s hand and she runs a clawed finger over its spine, light and gentle, just like the lady in the uniform keeps saying as new visitors trickle in, mostly kids, rush to the tank, start grabbing at the rays. The same ray pushes against you; its back is slimy and soft, or feels slimy, anyway – it doesn’t leave any sort of residue on your fingers so perhaps it’s just very slick and wet. Though the rays look chubby there is hard bone immediately beneath the ray’s tough skin, and you pull your hand back and the ray dashes off to continue its long circling pace around the edge of the tank.

“What are these called again?” you ask Undyne.

“Cownose rays,” she tells you, letting another flop beneath her hand, breaking the surface of the water with its long tail as it swishes away. The name’s appropriate, you think; the rays have a sort of soft, cleft face that looks like a cow’s nose if you sort of squint.

“They’re cute,” you decide, and Undyne cuts her eyes over at you, flecks of gold circling on the edge of the bottomless pit. “Do they have stings?”

“In the wild they do, I think,” Undyne frowns, peering at one of the ray’s long whippy tails. “They’ve pulled these ones, though, you’d be able to see it.”

Undyne takes her hand from the water, wet and dripping, wipes it against her gills, breathes deep. When she drops her hand to her side her gills are moist and pink, light smell of salmon wafting from the gentle perforations on her neck. She sees you looking, cracks a gentle smile, like the sun cresting a light, light hill. “Penny for your thoughts?”

You shrug; you’re still watching the rays, circling over and over again. “Do you think they like being touched?” you ask as Undyne takes your hand and you wander out into the daylight again.

“I don’t know,” she says, thinking about it. “I suppose that if they didn’t they’d stay on the other side of the tank, right?”

“That makes sense.”

“And,” she continues, flashing you a quick grin, knives flashing in the dark, “how would you feel if you couldn’t scratch your own back? Ooh, let’s go see the manatees.”

And so you go see the manatees. One of them, a bored-looking girl wearing a Seaworld shirt explains, had her tail mangled by a propeller and can’t go back in the open ocean any more because she’s too clumsy. She doesn’t say what’s wrong with the other one. The manatees drift there in their pool, like floating boulders, really, grey as stone and blotchy on top. They have small, sad-looking faces. Undyne puts her hand up against the glass, leans against it, and one of them, the one with the intact tail drifts close, peers at Undyne. The girl tosses a hunk of lettuce into the tank and the other one wolfs it down, up near the surface, leaving shreds everywhere. After a moment the manatee drifts off to the other side of the tank, does a slow, graceful roll, goes up to the surface, begs for lettuce.

“Think they’re happy?” Undyne murmurs, quite softly, and you look over. Her customary shark-toothed grin has lost a few molars and her eyes are pensive, slow roil rippling them like an undersea volcano.

“I guess so,” you say. “They get plenty of food and there aren’t any predators.”

“I don’t know,” Undyne says as you move on, “I’d want to be free to go and do whatever I wanted even if there was some risk involved.”

“You’re not like most fish,” you remind her, kissing her lightly on the neck, just behind her gills, and she laughs, deep and rich and throaty.

“A shark’s still a fish, sprat,” she warns you, pupils clicking open like the iris on a camera, focusing on you. Then it passes, she’s peering down at the map. “Where do you want to go next?” she asks. “We haven’t seen the penguins yet…or the jellyfish, actually. That might be neat,” she considers. “I used to swim next to a big field of jellyfish. My mom would always tell me to stay out of it or they’d sting me.”

“Did you?”

“Hmm?”

“Did you stay out of it?”

“Oh. No, of course not. Do you know me?” she asks, nudging you in the ribs, and you pounce, draw her into you, kiss her like a flash of lightning. When you pull back she is grinning, draped softly over you. “Suddenly I don’t want to do much but that,” she tells you, and you roll your eyes.

“Let’s go see the jellyfish,” you say, dragging her off. She tightens her grip on your hand, bumps your hip with hers, and you do not look back but if you had you would see her give the manatees one last long glance.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought it was an interesting idea for Undyne to go to Seaworld and see creatures she's probably closer related to than people all caged up. At the time of writing I hadn't actually been to Seaworld, so I modeled this off of the aquarium in Boston. Personally I don't care about zoos, I think it'd be nice if it were possible for all animals to be free and safe but that isn't realistic. People who get all up in arms about them being inhumane have the wrong idea.


End file.
